


Silence

by Dassandre



Category: James Bond (Craig movies)
Genre: Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Fanart, Heavy Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-29
Updated: 2020-06-29
Packaged: 2021-03-04 02:14:24
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,043
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24975940
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Dassandre/pseuds/Dassandre
Summary: “You must have fucked something up on that last mission,” Alec said around a mouthful of chicken tikka at lunch one afternoon.
Relationships: James Bond & Alec Trevelyan, James Bond/Q
Comments: 10
Kudos: 143
Collections: MI6 Cafe MiniBang





	1. Lambeth Bridge

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Boffin1710](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Boffin1710/gifts), [AsheTarasovich (natalieashe)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/natalieashe/gifts), [springbok7](https://archiveofourown.org/users/springbok7/gifts).



> Hi all! 
> 
> This is my submission for the 2020 MiniBang. My artist is the magnificent BBR, and you can find the link to her wonderful art at the end of the second chapter. The prompt was: James comes back from a mission to find that Q is jumpy and closed off. Q isn't saying anything, and James doesn't know how to help him or reconnect.
> 
> I have gifted this work to the three people who are the biggest supporters of my writing and, more importantly, of me. I adore each one of you, dear ones, and you know why.
> 
> I do hope that you enjoy this tale. There will be additional notes at the end of this that, if given now, would spoil the story. Please note, that I have chosen NOT to use Archive Warnings, so please be aware of the tags.

James stopped short at the top of the steps and huffed a sigh of relief at what he saw at the base. 

He’d been tracking his quarry for most of the night. Had visited frequented haunts and known bolt holes but had come up empty at every turn. He’d walked from one end of the city to the other, his anxiety ratcheting up with each passing hour. With the sun coming up, he’d been headed back to base for one final check before calling in reinforcements but decided to take a final turn past where he’d first started his hunt.

Bloody finally! 

Q sat at the bottom of the second set of steps of Lambeth Bridge, head in his hands, staring into the swirling grey-green depths of the river. He wore a dark blue hoodie, patterned pyjama pants, and a pair of purple and yellow Vans trainers so old they were worn through with holes at the toes. He’d bolted from the flat hours ago, leaving his mobiles behind. Q  _ never  _ left his phones behind. Anywhere. For any reason. They were his connection to the world inside and outside of MI6. It just didn’t happen.

Until it had.

And that, for James, was the true measure of how deeply unnerved and frightened Q was by what James had discovered about him. 

Things hadn’t been right between them since James returned from his last mission, a four-month assignment that should have taken only one. But things had grown unexpectedly complex, and James had been forced to abandon all contact with Six and go deep cover for the bulk of that time. When he’d resurfaced, intel in hand, bad guys dead, and returned triumphant to London, it was to a lukewarm reception at best. Oh, Q the Quartermaster was pleased as punch at the success of the mission, but Q the Lover and Friend was, well, not  _ unwelcoming,  _ but distant and distracted and absent in a way he hadn’t been before James had left.

Granted, there was always a bit of an adjustment period whenever James was on assignment for more than a week or two. It took time to settle back into his ‘domestic’ self and the life he shared with Q, but even after a month on home soil  _ Q  _ had yet to warm to  _ him _ . Thinking he might have felt a tad isolated and abandoned during the mission, James started wooing Q again as he’d done at the beginning of their relationship. After the dust from Skyfall settled, it had taken James nearly two months to realise that the reason he spent so much extra time in Q-Branch than once he’d done was that he was completely gone on his Quartermaster. 

In retrospect, his efforts then had been a bit over the top, but Q had been won over in spite of it all. James knew Q’s likes and dislikes far better now. He brought tea and scones for Q and his entire team from his favourite independent tea house, Mad Hatter’s. Even had them create a bespoke tea just for Q: a special blend of Earl Grey with hints of coconut and cream that would never be sold to anyone else. Q smiled broadly and thanked James for his consideration for his team and said the tea was perfect, but it was apparent that feeding and watering the boffins hadn’t done the trick. 

Next came a framed photo of David Tennant, Matt Smith, and John Hurt on set together as Ten, Eleven, and the War Doctor from the _ Doctor Who _ episode “The Day of the Doctor”. A photo James had  _ not  _ picked up at a memorabilia shop. He’d pulled in a few favours to have it personalised for Q by Tennant and Smith with Jenna Coleman’s signature standing in for the now deceased Hurt. 

Q’s smile was wider, and though not James’ goal, the sex that night was spectacular, but it was only a matter of days before Q slipped away again, this time further than before. Even signed first edition hardbacks of  _ Moonheart  _ and  _ Spiritwalk  _ by Charles de Lint had limited results. 

James had no choice at that point but to do something he was admittedly shite at: trying to talk things through. He loved Q too much to give up on their relationship without fighting tooth and nail for it. Q nodded distractedly, wandered about their flat whilst James talked about his worries, eventually kissing him on the cheek and swearing he still loved James very much before he squirreled himself away in his home office.

James was left standing in the middle of their sitting room feeling for all the world that Q just didn’t hear him.

“You must have fucked  _ something  _ up on that last mission,” Alec said around a mouthful of chicken tikka at lunch one afternoon. He pointed his fork at James. “Or fucked some _ one _ you shouldn’t have done?”

“No. Nothing like that. No fucking at all, in fact. Hell, I even warned them ahead of time that I was going dark and why.”

Alec snorted. “Christ, Q really does have you tamed. Oh, don’t look at me like that, it’s a good thing. Without him, you’d have been dead inside a year after that whole cockup in Istanbul, and I rather like having you around.”

“Oh you do, do you?”

“Of course,” Alec smirked and bit into a chicken momo. “You buy me lunch.”

James may or may not have thrown his naan across the table.

But by the end of their meal, the only thing they could agree upon was that he also seemed increasingly tense and even a tad distracted at work. Other than that, they had no clue what might be wrong with Q. 

It had all come to a rather horrifying crescendo whilst Q was running 004’s mission in Kinshasa. James hadn’t been present for it, but from the accounts he received afterward, it was something of a miracle Q had been able to limit the collateral damage to within the range Mallory the FCO considered acceptable. The seriously injured Scarlett Papava was being repatriated back to the UK for medical treatment. Initial reports indicated she would make a full, if prolonged, recovery.

Five minutes after he had word that 004 was safely on the medevac flight back home, Q crisply informed M that he was taking a week’s leave and passed off 009’s mission and the running of the branch to R. When Q’s blue-haired second told James all about it when he arrived to escort him home for the night, she said Q had fled like the Devil himself was after him.

James returned to their flat where he found Q sitting on his side of their bed, back to the door, with his head in his hands.

Though it had only been a few hours, James couldn’t remember exactly what he said to Q then. Questions about what had happened? Words of comfort? Surely those. All James  _ did  _ remember was the silence. How Q gave no response. No indication he even knew James was there. 

Or cared. 

James remembered he got angry. All the tension and uncertainty that had been building for a month spilled out from him.

“Fuck you, Q! I’m bloody done being ignored!”

He strode across the bedroom and yanked Q to his feet.

Q shouted in surprise and hit back, struggling against James as if being attacked by an unknown assailant he hadn’t heard coming.

The look of shock and fear on Q’s face caused James to release his arm instantly. 

An unknown assailant he hadn’t heard coming.

Hadn’t  _ heard  _ …

Oh, Christ!

“You couldn’t hear me.”

Suddenly it was all so clear. Devastatingly so. Q hadn’t been  _ ignoring  _ him.

“James …” His name from Q’s throat was a strangled moan of fear and loss. 

“You  _ can’t  _ hear me.”

Q’s eyes were focussed on James’ lips. 

“You can’t hear  _ anything _ .”

Q ran.

That had been hours ago. 

James had started his search for Q here at Lambeth Bridge, a place he knew Q connected with. He said it wasn’t just a physical bridge meant for cars and pedestrians to get from one side of the Thames to the other; it extended far into the past, linking the now with the then, reaching deep into memory and soul.  _ His  _ memory and soul. 

But Q hadn’t been here earlier.

James tread heavily on the steps as he descended, hoping the vibrations through the stone would warn Q of his approach. He didn’t want a repeat of what had happened at the flat.

Q turned his head and looked up at him. He tensed. Glanced about like a deer seeking escape from a predator. James stopped and sat down on the step three above Q. He kept his frame loose, hands dangling between his knees. Q relaxed.

They looked at each other through the pale light of a rose-coloured dawn.

It was Q who finally spoke.

“It started about six months ago. Thought it was just wax build-up or another ear infection. You know how sick I was last winter.”

James did. Q was rarely ill, but last winter, if there had been a bug to catch, Q managed to find it: two colds, a sinus infection, a double-ear infection, and influenza in the span of five months. More than once he’d complained about spending more time in Medical than in Q-Branch. 

“Clearly it wasn’t wax,” James spoke slowly but not insultingly so. Rather, he enunciated clearly as Q was reading his lips, something James knew he had learned decades ago when he was a part of the care system. A defencive tool he’d used to stay whole in some of the rougher homes when foster parents weren’t always as observant as they should have been. 

“Some, but that wasn’t it. Still muffled.” Q rose and came to share James’ step, facing him and told him the rest of the story. It had been annoying but not enough that Q felt he needed to say anything. He managed to deal with it, for a while, but things had grown progressively worse not long after James went dark. He’d been afraid to seek help from the doctors in Medical and what it might mean for his career, so Q had used one of his aliases to visit a specialist in Harley Street. There had been tests. A  _ lot  _ of tests. And the diagnosis came in the day before James returned home.

Bilateral sensorineural hearing loss caused by a gene mutation.

Q rubbed his face and pressed his palms to his eyes. His glasses balanced precariously on his forehead and James plucked them off before they could fall. “There are a lot of shite things about not knowing who your parents are, but right now no family medical history rather tops the list. One of them was most certainly a carrier.”

James cautiously eyed the jogger approaching from Victoria Tower Gardens and pulled Q closer as the man passed up the stairs. 

“How bad is it?”

Q bit his lip. 

James tipped up his chin with a finger until Q was looking at him. “How bad?”

“Moderately severe at the last test, but it’s permanent and progressive.” He sighed and shrugged. “Based on what happened earlier, safe to say it’s progressed. I  _ never  _ heard you behind me. Thought I was alone. James, I--”

James pulled Q to his feet and took his hand. It was chilled like the rest of him. “Let’s get back to the flat,” he said, making sure Q could see his face as he spoke. “You need a hot shower, something inside your belly, and sleep. In that order. There will be plenty of time to talk later.”

They were passing Thames House on Horseferry, halfway home, when Q stopped in his tracks. “How are you so fucking calm about all this?!” Q was completely bewildered. He ignored the curious looks of the other passersby and pulled James into an empty doorway of a still-closed shop. “I did  _ nothing  _ the way I should have done! I hid my condition from Six, scared they’d sack me. I used earwigs to help me hear for missions until yesterday when I nearly got Scarlett killed!. And worse, I lied to  _ you _ . I said everything was fine when noth--”

James’ laugh was devoid of humour. It was the one he used when about half a step from saying ‘fuck this’ and walking away. Though Q couldn’t hear it, he remembered its sound when he saw the accompanying acrimony flash in James’ eyes. Recognised it from the times James had looked at others that way, always hoping to never have that glare turned on him. 

“Oh, I’m far from fucking calm about all this, Rowan. I’m just managing to contain it. And only because the row we  _ are  _ going to have about this is not what needs to happen right now.” He turned from Q and pounded a closed fist against the brick of the entryway, leaning into it with his anger and frustration before swinging back round to face his partner, irate, finger pointed at him. “We have one rule! One!”

Open and honest. Always. Or it doesn’t work.

They’d made that rule the only one of their relationship and no matter how hard things might be to share with the other, they had always followed it religiously.

Until now.

James scrubbed at his hair and ran his hand down his face. “You’ve had me in knots since I got back. I was sure I was losing you and had no idea why, or what I’d done, or what you had done. Your silence hurt me, Q. You don’t get to do that to me. To  _ us _ . Not even over something like this.  _ Especially  _ not over something like this!” He gestured at Q’s ears, the tips of his fingers catching the curls that wrapped about them. “Damn it, Rowan! You should have  _ said  _ something!”

Q’s face twisted with the anguish he felt. “I know. I’m sor--”

“No! Not now. And sure as fuck not here.” James cut him off. “I’ve told you the plan: hot shower, hot food, a warm bed. After we’ve slept, I  _ might  _ be ready to listen to your apology.”

“It’s more than I deserve,” Q said.

James sighed and shook his head, anger dissipating somewhat. For all his pain these last weeks, he could only imagine Q’s own. His fear. James cupped the side of Q face, and Q leaned into it, desperate for James’ touch and the affection he was fearful he’d lost through his actions. James waited until he opened his eyes again before speaking. “No, Rowan. You deserve not to have had this happen to you, but you’ve said there’s no changing it. Thing is, we have to sort out  _ how  _ I found out about it before we can move forward to how I’m going to help you  _ live  _ with it. And I am going to help you ... help  _ us  _ live with it.”

“I love you.” The words tumbled out in a rush. He couldn’t remember the last time he said them. Felt the  _ need  _ to say them out loud. Their feelings were largely understood between them, preferring to let their actions say more than they could in that regard, but considering … “I love you more than is probably healthy for either of us.”

“Then we suffer from the same affliction.” James’ kiss was harsh against his mouth. He caught Q by the elbow and they set off again down the street, nodding at the shop owner who had been tarrying near the kerb, unwilling to interrupt the domestic taking place in her doorway. “C’mon. We’ll grab some pastries at Pret to go with eggs and sausages. You always argue better when you have an almond croissant in you, anyway.”


	2. Almond Croissants

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Are we getting ready to argue, then?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Remember: Comments are Love!!! 💕💕💕

Q looked up from his coding and eyed the pair of almond croissants and cup of Q Blend Earl Grey next to his hand. He glanced warily up at the agent who had put them there. “Are we getting ready to argue, then?” He snagged one of the pastries. 

James laughed. “Not this time, but Moneypenny said you’d not taken time for lunch, so …”

“Interfering cow,” Q grumbled around a mouthful of flakey deliciousness and reached for the hot cuppa, sighing with pleasure at the first taste of steaming bergamot, coconut, and cream.

It had been nine months since he confessed all about his condition first to James and then to Mallory. Both men had been apoplectic -- for vastly different reasons -- but ultimately understanding and supportive. Scarlett Papava had refused Q’s apology because, from her standpoint, it wasn’t necessary. She didn’t blame Q for what happened and even understood why he’d been afraid to say anything about it to Six. 

“It’s every agent’s worst fear, love,” she’d told him from her bed in Medical. “Being taken out of the game whilst you still have plenty of cards to play. You did what any of us would have done, but you’ve been caught out. Now you’ll have to figure out how to do it all differently.”

It had taken a great deal of work on Q’s part to regain Mallory’s trust, though the month he’d been put on suspension after the enquiry into his cockup with 004’s mission had given him the time to repair his relationship with James.

A fair portion of that month had been spent with Q’s doctors learning about the nature of his severe hearing loss. Further exams proved things had, indeed, progressed. He could hear little to no speech, and loud sounds like a car horn didn’t startle him as it would James whose hearing was normal. The emotional highs and lows were worse than a rollercoaster with only half its wheels on the track -- for both of them -- but they waded through all the uncertainty and fear together and always made sure to keep the lines of communication open.

Whilst his doctors were confident he had hit a plateau and wouldn’t lose any more of his hearing, Q was reluctant to undergo surgery for an implant. The complications, though rare, were not an acceptable risk given all he still felt he had to do with Six, once he was allowed back to work, that is. Unfortunately, even the best hearing aids on the market were of little help to someone with severe hearing loss -- distorted the sound too much -- but once they heard what had happened to their Overlord, the R&D minions made it their mission to engineer a solution. Six months later, they had one. A modified and enhanced version of the earwig already in service, Q’s hearing amplifiers improved his ability to hear voices and even some ambient sound around him with surprising clarity. They worked so well, in fact, that Mallory was willing to give the Quartermaster clearance to run missions again, but Q patently refused. Though Scarlett had forgiven him, he could not forgive himself, and the mere thought of putting another agent’s life in jeopardy like that again had him wake screaming with nightmares for three nights after Mallory’s suggestion. It had taken James hours to soothe him to sleep again. 

Q was content, for the most part, to run his branch, supervise his R&D minions, and tinker in his lab designing new and better tools for his agents to use in the field. He left the missions themselves to R and her cadre of handlers. 

With the first croissant gone, and Q making contented Quartermaster noises, James brushed crumbs from the corner of Q’s mouth with his thumb and stole a kiss before sitting himself in the chair opposite his desk. “Ears bothering you?” He nodded at the amplifiers abandoned in their dish next to the laptop. 

Q nodded and sipped his tea. The major flaw with the amplifiers is that Q found he could only wear them for a few hours a day before he got a headache. It was enough, though. Usually.

He pressed behind his left ear to relieve the throbbing, a familiar sign that told James they had been more than bothering him and a migraine had started. “Headache started about an hour ago,” he admitted, “but I have to finish debugging this programme before 009 goes out tonight. R won’t be able to run Rand’s mission without it.”

“Rowan …”

“Oh, don’t _Rowan_ me. Yes, I’ve pushed it this week, but it needs to be done, and it’s one of the few things I’m still _competent_ enough to do, so let me do it,” Q said testily. Turned back to his laptop, he deliberately cut off his line of sight to James. It had become his favourite way of trying to end a conversation he didn’t want to have, and it would have been quite effective if he was talking to anyone other than James Bond.

Maybe they were going to argue after all. 

James stared at the top of Q’s head. Curls more tousled than normal. He’d been digging his hands in them. Frustrated. But not from the computer programme. Q lost himself in code. It was healing for him. A balm.

No. James recognised this reaction from Q. He was feeling inadequate. Though it had been largely quelled, it still popped up from time to time. Usually when someone called his qualifications into question. Oh, Christ. He’d had a joint meeting with his colleagues from MI5 and GCHQ along with their bosses and the Foreign and Home Secretaries that morning. It was to be Q’s first meeting with the new Home Secretary.

Suddenly James knew what had set Q off.

He leaned forward and pushed the lid of the laptop down, more than willing to face Q’s irate face at such interference with his work.

“The fuck are y--”

“What did she say?” James asked. 

Q blinked. He didn’t ask who James meant, but he didn’t answer the question, either.

So James repeated it. He kept the tone of his words measured for his own sanity because whilst there were many in government he wanted to kill, she was one he could see himself actually following through with. Only three weeks into her new role, the Home Secretary was largely considered a right bitch by most of the populace, and they only saw her public face. If they had any inkling of what she was like behind closed doors, it would be pitchforks, firebrands, holy water, and wooden stakes.

Q swallowed hard, still clearly unsettled by the experience. James had once thought there was nothing that could unnerve either The Quartermaster or Rowan. He’d seen both aspects of Q handle the most challenging of situations with seeming ease, but in retrospect, he had been wrong. Q’s hearing loss had forced James to learn to read his partner in different ways and far more closely than before. The subtleties in his expressions, the meaning of an off-hand gesture, the fluctuations of the tone of his voice. And whilst he still regarded Q as one of the strongest -- and at times, most bloody-minded -- people he’d ever known, his deafness had widened microscopic cracks of uncertainty and doubt he had spent the bulk of his life trying to seal. In spite of that, however, Q wasn’t one to let just _any_ comment phase him. 

This one must have been off the charts awful.

“She didn’t know I had the amplifiers in. I don’t know if that makes it worse or not.”

“Q …” James prodded once more.

Through a clenched jaw, he said, “She told the Foreign Secretary, in M’s hearing, ‘the fact MI6 would vet a deaf, and probably dumb, twink to be its Quartermaster is just another sign that our country is sinking quickly into a miasma of mediocrity.” 

“The fuck!” James’ fingers twitched, reaching for his weapon though he had no one to turn it on. “What did you do?”

Q’s chuckle was rueful and sad, though there was a slight pull of a smile at the corner of his mouth. “I didn’t have to do anything. M, Five’s Director-General, and Flemming from GCHQ went for her like Henry II after Thomas Becket.” He finished his tea and set the cup aside. “Once the Foreign Secretary had a go at her, too, she was temporarily cowed --”

“Being a cow is _not_ a temporary thing for that bitch.”

“-- but it’s just as well I don’t have to interact with her too often.” Q’s smile was a bit brighter with James’ interruption. “After that I let my work speak and my recommendations speak for me, but …” he swallowed tightly and looked out the glass to the team room at large.

James leaned forward in his chair and rested his hand atop Q’s on the desk. “Tell me.”

Q rotated his hand so he was gripping James’. A tad desperately, perhaps. “It’s all so fucking hard some days. I mean it was nearly impossible before, but now …”

“What are you trying to tell me, Rowan?” The unspoken words were heavy between them. The atmosphere was not unlike that when James was waiting for a second assailant to pop out from behind a corner. It had been growing for days now. Not just at work but at home again, too. 

Q pulled his hand away, opened his laptop, pressed a few keys, and turned the computer so James could read what was on the screen. When he was done, James closed the lid again and looked critically at his partner. “And what would you do if you didn’t work for Six?” he asked. 

Q’s, as of yet unsent, letter of resignation had been surprisingly brief for a man who made regular use of his expansive vocabulary, but it got the point across. He felt he was a detriment to the service in his condition and continuing to believe otherwise unnecessarily put lives at risk. Complete codswallop, but James would address that later if he needed to. 

“Take some time off, to begin with. Figure out a bit better how to live with all this,” he gestured at his head, “without the constant needs of Six always interfering.”

James hummed. “How long? A year? Two?”

“Hadn’t decided yet. As long as I need, I suppose.”

“And then what? It takes very little for you to get bored. And you’re dangerous if you’re not kept occupied.”

“I don’t know …. tinker. Invent? Bug work, I suppose.” Q tried not to squirm under James’ intense gaze. It felt like he was being interrogated. “I’ve not always worked for Six. I did have a good career as an independent contractor in my previous life. I was quite in demand.”

James scoffed. “You were about three steps away from being arrested for treason. Not all your clients had the best interests of Queen and Country at heart, and you know it.”

“I was naive.”

“You were bored.”

Q sighed. He _had_ been bored and had found a certain thrill by dipping into the greyer areas of computer hacking. That’s how Olivia Mansfield had found him and given him a choice that wasn’t much of a choice. Making his way up through TSS and R&D, Q had done and tried and created things he’d never dreamed about in civilian life. MI6 was the perfect playground for a skilled hacker with a morally dubious personal compass and an abject fear of prison life. But that had been before. He tried.

But he was tired.

“You can’t quit, Q. You know you can’t. Nor do you want to. That’s why you haven’t sent that yet.” James nodded at the letter on the laptop. 

“WHAT THE FUCK AM I SUPPOSED TO DO, JAMES?!” In the team room beyond, Q’s minions looked as one over their shoulders, various expressions of surprise and concern on their faces at their boss’ outburst. Whilst it wasn’t unheard of for The Quartermaster to lose his temper, he typically did so quietly, pointedly, and so coldly that Alec Trevelyan said Q’s icy tone was enough to freeze the bollocks of a Cossack. And Trevelyan would know. It was something they all tried to avoid being on the receiving end of.

James stood, shook his head at R who was halfway to the office, ready to assist, and closed the door. He engaged the privacy protocols, and the glass looking over the team room snapped opaque. Q had leapt from his chair and was pacing the line of the window. “What am I supposed to do?” he asked again, only a tad softer than before but it was infused with loss. “I can’t do the job anymore!”

“No. You can’t do the job the _way_ you did before. There’s a difference,” James clarified when Q finally stopped pacing long enough to look at him. 

“So what do I do?” he asked a third time. It was barely a breath this time. Shoulders shrugging with an air of defeat that did not sit well with James at all. He felt his own ire rise. Crossing the distance between them in three purposeful steps, he grabbed those slight shoulders in his hands and shook them. 

“Have the mother-fucking surgery, Rowan!”

“But we agreed tha--”

“No. _We_ didn’t agree to anything. You made the decision yourself. I listened to your reasons, provided my thoughts, but the decision was all yours. It _had_ to be. It’s your health and your life, but Rowan, my God …” James' hands slid up Q’s neck to cup his face tenderly, “there is no earthly reason why you shouldn’t have the implants. It’s as safe as any surgery can be, and if there are complications … well, can you honestly stand here and tell me they’re any better or worse than the pain you’re going through now?”

James watched as a gamut of emotions crossed Q’s face, and he felt his own throat grow tight when Q brushed it with the back of fingers and said, “I’d get to hear your voice again. Of all the things I can’t hear, I miss that the most.” He bit his lip, deciding, then, “You’ll go with me to see the surgeon?”

“I wouldn’t be anywhere else.”  
  
  


* * *

  
  
You can find BBR's wonderful art for this story [here](https://boredbeingregular.tumblr.com/image/622322846567432192).

**Author's Note:**

> I have attempted to treat this subject matter with as much sensitivity and awareness as possible, but as with all physical challenges, no one person's experience is the same as another's, and Q's and James' manner of addressing Q's deafness is indicative of *their* choices and fears (founded or unfounded).


End file.
